What would it take to make knife sages actually useful?

[lenticular]

Knife sages are notorious for being terrible and basically just a trap option on promotion. And to some extent, that might be deliberate, to give a reward for leveling up Soren, Ilyana or Tormod rather than just using Calill or Bastian, but for the purpose of this discussion, let's assume that picking knives is supposed to be a viable choice that people might actually want to make. Let's imagine that IS were making a remake of PoR and wanted knife sages to finally have their day in teh sun. In that case, what would it take to make knives an actually competitive choice with staves? 1-2 range knives? Poison effects on knives like in Fates or Engage? A knife that does magic damage like the Flame Shuriken or Misericorde? A mage with decent strength stat? Getting rid of the 17 chapter recruitment drought for staff users? All of the above? Even more than that?

[Shaky Jones]

Given the direction the franchise is going with knives, I'd go under the assumption that they'll definitely do a FatesGage style knife. It seems like a well established point now that daggers are the debuffing 1-2 range weapon usually involving poison (fates ninjas with poison strike and engage daggers having a poison mechanic as well as wolf knights having the same fates skill). I personally find daggers in these games to be busted and a must have on the highest difficulty, but if we're going to choose between this and staves, a highly valued utility item, especially among mages who wouldn't be as strong or swift as a fates ninja, this could round up to be an even match. 

Illyana has a sizable strength growth, so she could do fine with that potential new knife, although the average Soren would still be a lost cause. I imagine healing is much better than debuffing at the cost of no damage when you could've just attacked. He'd need a flame shurikin-like weapon (maybe give Petrine her own elite army that drops one of each flame weapon), but that could honestly be extremely OP. Trying to make these 2 even picks would also mean we should consider changing some prepromotes back into using staves so the player isn't pressured to just pick staves out of fear of not having any variety (for example: Stave Callil, Dagger Bastian, but don't give Callil too high a stave rank). You'd probably want to buff every mage's strength by a tiny bit overall. Id be intered in seeing PoR remade with modern gameplay such as enemy sages occasionally using fates daggers to prevent steam rolling. It'd be nice to see how they handle the enemies now having this new weapon type. 

Edited September 5, 2023 by Shaky Jones

[Armchair General]

Just create an magical knife that deals physical damage and poisons people, problem solved.

[Integrity]

it sounds hokey ("yeah no shit ike") but the core question, first, has to be what should knife sages accomplish? i bring this up because (for instance) the 'have a knife like the flame shuriken' angle is just, like, you've given them Tomes With An Extra Step, right? don't consider the stats of the units in question first or the way the game is already put together, you gotta be able to say what the point of Sage Knives is besides 'it is funny'.

 

imo, the best angle one could take if we really want to bring it back is to design the game around magic damage being really polarizing - generally low res, but low tome might, but high wizard res. fighting wizards with wizardry would be kind of a standstill, then, and sages would be far better used to support their allies by taking out enemy melee troops or, with staves, by healing. giving sages knives, then, could be a statement of specializing this wizard as a wizard-killer (a King Wizard of sorts) because, while his strength might be low, enemy defense is cratered and he's going to get much more damage out of slinging that knife out than by using magic to fight magic

 

that's not the only way to take it and i'm positive armchair general (who has replied (show reply)) has a different take, but i think any interesting approach to it needs to answer that simple question - why take a sage knives - before any numerical or specific talk can occur. i think it would be a neat way to differentiate wizard-duelist-wizards (e.g. dread fighter lite) from other, supporting wizards, but that's just one way to go about it

e: i was baited. his post sucked

Edited September 5, 2023 by Integrity

[Florete]

Knives are there to give Sages a physical option and make them hybrid fighters. The problem then is, it's hard to make such a concept valuable in the first place. For this to work you need to look at a lot more than the Sages themself, you need to keep the potential viability of hybrid units in mind for most of the entire game's design.

Some ideas I have:

• Knives that use the user's mag and the enemy def.
• Knives that use the Str stat as normal but the lower of the enemy's def or res. (Obviously you also need a good enough Str stat)
• In a theoretical remake with the appropriate difficulty, debuffs such as those seen in Fates and Engage.
• 1-2 range. (Practically mandatory)
• A reversed Fates weapon triangle, so Tomes > Knives > Bows > Tomes. This would mean taking knives on a Sage gets them an advantageous option against the weapon type they're otherwise disadvantaged against.

Basic magic knives are fine for other classes, but not a solution for Sages. They already have tomes.

[Uscari]

I think it's fine the way it is, sages have no conceptual relationship with knives thematically, so I see no need to make knives work with them. I would remove the trap of promoting with knives by simply removing the option and trainees get staves automatically when promoting.

But for the hell of it, if I was in a mood to try and make it work...

Add an "enchanting" mechanic that allows you to imbue your knife with magic with the tome of your choice. Your magic stat and strength stat both add to the might of the weapon, but it all counts as magical damage.

Enchanting with wind makes it effective against flyers (also adds 20hit), enchanting with thunder makes it effective against dragons(adds 10 crit), enchanting with fire makes it effective against beast laguz (+3 defense while equipped). Enchanted knives can have 1-2 range.

Enchanting the knife will destroy it after 1 round of combat (you can double), it ends your movement (like trading/talking), and only knife sages can use enchanted knives. Could also add a little extra base might to knives to make this more competitive.

It's basically like making a hyper-powerful tome to kill 1 unit.

Still probably better to go with staves, but at least now knives aren't totally useless.

Edited September 5, 2023 by Uscari

[Armchair General]

1 hour ago, Integrity said:

that's not the only way to take it and i'm positive armchair general (who has replied (show reply)) has a different take,

Make an cursed knife that either prevents an mage from causing magic or it an single-use thing that stuns someone.

 

1 hour ago, Integrity said:

but i think any interesting approach to it needs to answer that simple question - why take a sage knives - before any numerical or specific talk can occur

Because wizards are cool, but they're too frail to carry any form of conventional weaponry; so the devs just had them hiding knives in the sleeves of their robes and called it an day.

But the main problem with throwing knives in video games is that nobody can agree on just how dangerous they're actually are.

 

But they are fun to use, though

Edited September 5, 2023 by Armchair General

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

Make Knives uncounterable; that is, give them the innate "Cancel" effect. So, if Calill doesn't want to take a counter-attack from a foe with 1-2 range, she'll use a Knife instead of a tome. Couple this with either a debuff, or a "poison strike", and you've got a decent chip weapon that helps setup the kill. It would also be a big help to Sothe, not having to worry about his opponents hitting back. The only unit who becomes borderline-OP is Volke, and even then... these are low-Might, 1-range weapons in PoR, and he's infantry, so he's not gonna actually be overpowered.

[ping]

2 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Make Knives uncounterable; that is, give them the innate "Cancel" effect. So, if Calill doesn't want to take a counter-attack from a foe with 1-2 range, she'll use a Knife instead of a tome. Couple this with either a debuff, or a "poison strike", and you've got a decent chip weapon that helps setup the kill. It would also be a big help to Sothe, not having to worry about his opponents hitting back. The only unit who becomes borderline-OP is Volke, and even then... these are low-Might, 1-range weapons in PoR, and he's infantry, so he's not gonna actually be overpowered.

If the 100% Cancel made Volke too powerful, it would also be possible to move the effect to a class skill for knife-choosing Sages. I like the idea, since it gives knives more of a unique identity than just allowing them to hit harder.

[Imuabicus der Fertige]

Not a fan of knife as a weapon for Sages. Feels like "We must innovate, quick what do we do?" If a mage is too weak to handle a sword, they don´t belong on the map, they belong in a sanatorium or on the receiveing end of a coup de grâce and I frankly see no reason why we shouldn´t have mages ballin in the melee with weapons, unless there is a lore reason akin to poweful magic = crippled body. If Athos steps up, I´m expecting 5x5 fire balls, but the closest FE has gotten to showing powerful magic, outside of "hehe can´t win against gharnef" is the magic gambits of TH (I might be misremembering  but the strongest damage wise are still the lord battallions which are all physical in appearance no?) and before that, the fucken warp staff.

 Everybody knows rocks are a timeless weapon from a less civilized age. If Merric can conjure up storms with Excalibur, then give him a couple pebbles and he´s walking around with a Glock or a shotgun.

 

Anyway, for magic user knifes: infinite uses (spectral knife or some justification) and MAG calculates for hit, crit and procc skills should the exist. Add additional effects as per weapon rank.

[Armchair General]

16 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Make Knives uncounterable; that is, give them the innate "Cancel" effect

This is extremely unbelievable. You have an guy who's capable of taking an sledgehammer to the face and being stabbed in the chest by some rich kid on an horse and some scrawny guy with an knife was all it took to incapacitate him?

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

41 minutes ago, Armchair General said:

This is extremely unbelievable. You have an guy who's capable of taking an sledgehammer to the face and being stabbed in the chest by some rich kid on an horse and some scrawny guy with an knife was all it took to incapacitate him?

I was thinking moreso that, since the Knife is a very light weapon, the attacker is able to strike and run away before the target can counter-attack. Alternatively, the target can counter-attack, but the knife-wielder is so agile that they dodge the attack.

Like, consider the mosquito. Getting bit by one doesn't "incapacitate" me. In fact, I usually barely notice it. And even when I do, if I try to smack one, I usually miss. I could see Knives being handled similarly.

[Armchair General]

Yeah, it works if you're sidestepping an thrust from a spear and there's an bit of wind up swing with an axe. But with an sword, it kind of falls apart unless you grab the guy's arm and start stabbing the shit out of him.

[ping]

It would work because magic, duh. The Sage can magic some short-duration paralysation spell, but it has to be channeled through the dagger into the wound because the spell effect can't penetrate the skin. Or, if you don't want this to be Sage-exclusive, it's some poison coating with the same effect.

Obviously, I pulled that explanation right out of my arse, but I wouldn't say it's less believable than a priest summoning damaging holy light beams by praying really hard.

Edited September 7, 2023 by gnip